Atlas

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Our first foray into the high seas of pirate-themed MMO Atlas is a remarkably literal one – we spawn at the bottom of the ocean, rather than in one of the intended, very-much-land-based freeport starting points. Our second sees us spawning in a freeport, only to encounter an elephant suspended over a street like an archway, its backside and head clipping through buildings on either side and its feet making walking motions a metre off the ground.

Atlas is in Early Access, so bugs are to be expected, but they’re also worth warning you about. That’s partly because the game is also being sold for just under £25 – a not-insignificant dent in one’s wallet – and partly because it would be easy to fall in love with Studio Wildcard’s ambitions for the game.

Studio Wildcard – or rather, Grapeshot Games, the studio set up within Wildcard to work on Atlas – is the developer of Ark: Survival Evolved. While Ark offers players 100-player survival game islands with tameable dinosaurs, crafting and clans, Atlas is intended to support tens of thousands of players in a single world that’s 1,200 times the size of the